Ngalpa lake eso manin Awghadhapa nabi sixth goeygipa. We give thanks to God for this sixth day. Ubilnga matha kedha ngitha ngurpemin ngoeymun igililmaynu. I would like you to learn our cultural way of life. Pudhamin mura ngalpalpa ngulaygoepa yananab. So that each and every one of you understands. My people are from the beautiful island of Saibai in the top western Torres Strait Islands. My gently spoken apu (mother) was a nurturer. She modelled, rather than talked about, her cultural knowledge, including in the way she only harvested what she needed and what she could replenish. She always put the ashes from a cooking fire into the garden, knowing wood ash contains nutrients that benefit plant growth. When she harvested from our gardens, she always dug the soil back in. When we ate fish, she showed us how to bury the bones into the garden. These practices were undertaken to put life back into the soil – into the land – to maintain balance. Psalm 24:1 says that “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” We recognise that the Creator God is ultimately sovereign. God made us the First Peoples of the Torres Strait Islands. God gave us the islands thousands of years ago to take care of them – the God that Torres Strait Islander peoples know in our Melanesian and Polynesian way, in our cultural way. While we recognise that the Creator God is ultimately sovereign, Torres Strait Islander peoples perceive and experience sovereignty in a different way to people from Western contexts. For us, sovereignty is about how we nurture the boeradhar (land), malu (sea) and dapar 70
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